LuckyRobin's Personal Finance Blog

Getting Rid of Massive Debt

About Me

Lucky Robin

I am a 48 year old stay at home mother. I have been married to my wonderful husband for 23 years, though we have been together for 26 years. Our daughter is 21 and our son is 18 and is home-schooled. We live in Washington state's beautiful most NW corner.

After thirteen long years, and nine years intensively working on it, we paid off a massive amount of medical debt, around $100K, and are now free of consumer debt since March of 2016, though we still owe my mother some money.

Archive for September, 2006

So, I'm at Costco and this couple gets behind me in line at the checker and they are seriously crowding me. Not just invading my space bubble, but pushing their cart into my back. I had to ask them twice to stop shoving it into me. The third time I just sort of leaned back and gave the cart a little shove. I heard a little yelp. That stopped that, but...as I'm unloading my cart they are grumbling at me taking so long. I only had 8 things in my cart and I had to wait for counter space to put stuff up.

Anyway, I get my cart cleared and I go to push it into the cart aisle and the woman has walked around me to stand in the cart aisle and is putting stuff down on the counter. When she finally moves I push my cart where it goes and turn to walk into the customer aisle to pay and they've shoved their cart right up against the end of the counter. So I try to walk around them and they manage to block the customer aisle. I am biting my tongue pretty hard at this point.

I say excuse me and they just look at me blankly. I let out an exasperated sigh of noise and say, "I don't care how much of a hurry you are in to get out of here, if you don't let me get back ahead of you to where my groceries are, you are going to be waiting an awful lot longer." I said it politely, when what I really wanted to say is 1. not appropriate for a family forum and 2. not words I say out loud or usually even in my head.

Finally one of the employee's physically escorted the couple out of the way. And they had the nerve to bellyache the entire time as if they thought I had cut in line in front of them. I so wanted to give them a piece of my mind or say one of the lovely, bitingly sarcastic remarks I had going on in my head. But I didn't. I held my tongue.

These people really should have known how to behave, they had to be a good 20 years older than I am, but they were behaving as if they were (well, I was going to say teenagers, but I've seen better behaved teenagers) raised in a zoo. They were just flat out rude. But I calmed myself down by imagining dumping a bucket of ice cold water over their heads. And when I was done I smiled at them and with as much saccharine as possible told them to have a nice day now. I thought the lady was going to blow a gasket as I casually sauntered away.

Anyway, I spent $31 there on groceries and loaded $50 onto my gas card, then went and got gas at their station. It is at $2.55 a gallon now, spent $32. Other expenses today $6 for 4 hot chocolates at the soccer game but my mother will reimburse me $3 of that. I also spent $6.70 at Arby's for lunch.

I am so excited. It took me 5.5 months of cutting expenses and scrimping, but I have managed to save $1000. Wow. This is so doable. Next up, $1250. Goal is to add that $250 by the end of November. I know I can do it now.

I sent for a check from surveyspot this week of $5. I tested a product on the 27th that will net me $15. I'm hopefully about to qualify for another product test for an additional $15 and I should be cashing out on a couple of PTR's within the next week to ten days, as well. All of it is earmarked for savings.

Today was the weekly auto deposit to savings of $10, bringing my account to $957. The $3 transfer from paypal should come through tomorrow and I will be depositing $40 to hit my goal of $1000.

When I hit $1000, I am going to bite the bullet and open an ING account for six months with $250 to get the $25 deposit bonus. I am also going to take $250 and open an Emigrant Direct account as it is now at 5.15%. The remaining $500 will stay in my CU in case I need something for an emergency. I don't want to touch it, don't intend to touch it, but I'd rather have access to it quickly.

I will transfer the $10 weekly to Emigrant, plus the $65 monthly there as well, so that account will grow. When the time comes I will probably leave only $50 in my ING account so that if there ever comes a time when they are competitive again I can easily transfer money back there. Or so that if I am able to get referrals, I can get the bonus for that. I think I may end up opening accounts for my kids there, just so they can each get the $25 and I can get the $10 each for reffering them. But first their savings accounts need to build.

I am about to institute allowances with my kids. I will have them save 20% in their savings accounts that is not touchable, 10% will be used for church offerings, and 20% will be used for their piggy banks for them to save up for stuff they want to buy, or if they want to use it for buying presents at Christmas or birthdays. The other 50% they can spend as they wish.

I am thinking $20 a month each. Which seems high to me until I realize that they only will have $10 a month to blow. And I will keep their church money and their short-term savings money in my room so they can't just have at it. I think I'll make it a ritual, also. As in taking them to the bank to make their $4 deposits, counting out $2 in quarters for their church money and letting them clink them into the church banks, counting out the short-term savings money and having them put that money into that bank.

I am also thinking about putting $1 into their accounts each time they deposit their $4. They get a punch card at the bank and for every $5 deposit they get a punch and after 5 punches they get to pick a prize from the prize box. Good prizes, too like books and puzzles, not chintzy stuff. I can use it to explain a bit about 401Ks and how they match your retirement savings a bit.

The only difficulty I forsee is scraping up the $40 a month to do it. DH is supposed to get a raise in January so maybe it'll have to wait until then. I think it is important though to do it. I feel like teaching them to save and to make charitable contributions is an investment in their future. An investment that is just as important to me as investing in DH's 401K is.

Oh, the gas station I went to to get milk today didn't have enough pennies to make change so ended up giving me 10 cents in change instead of 9 cents. One more penny to add to my people keep giving me money total, bringing it to: $1.81 since April.

Both kids were home sick today. We went into my mother's house to be sick there for the day. The kids were happy to camp out in front of satellite TV. I did go out for a couple of hours, Mom was happy to watch them and give me a break.

I went to Walmart to buy cheap chicken soup, real sudafed (only have to sign over your first born to purchase it there, not also and arm and leg), grass seed to reseed the lawn where the pool was, a small space heater (my room is furthest away from the wood stove and also is on the windiest, coldest side of the house so there are some nights during winter when I need it) since the old one died last winter. Oh, also got a little decorative scarecrow that I attatched to my front door for fall decoration.

I like to change my front door with the seasons, so this little 89 cent scarecrow was a cheap way to do it. I also have a red bell wreath for winter time, a pretty rainbow pastel colored bow for spring and crossed American flags summer. Fall was the only season I didn't have anything for and seeing that silly thing grinning at me did wonders for my spirit when I put it up tonight.

I also looked through the Christmas stuff. They have a revolving light lighthouse and a revolving train train station that I want to get for my Christmas village set. But I refuse to buy them in September. The lighthouse will actually go with the stuff I already have as its mostly a fishing village. I buy one thing a year, generally, so probably will not get the train station unless I get it as a gift for my train crazy son for Christmas.

Afterwards at my mother's we finally had a chance to look through all her end of life paperwork. I am durable power of attorney in both health and finances and have copies of the medical directives on both parents. She gave me a copy of the list of assets, banks and bank accounts, the lawyer's address and phone number, and showed me where she is keeping the will as I will be executor. The lawyer also has a copy in her office. We discussed what to do if she goes before dad, who to call to get him set up in a local nursing home, the name and number of his neurologist, and both of their wishes regarding disposal of remains (cremation, scatter ashes, no funerals).

She also has explained how the mortgage debt will be settled if she goes first, if dad goes first, or if they go together. And I will have custodial access to a money account to pay for all the expenses that may come up before the will can be carried out. So that won't have to come out of pocket and be reimbursed by the estate upon distribution. That is also a relief.

I have been after my mother for five years to get this stuff taken care of and am so glad she has everything in order now. It is one less worry for me to have everything clearly spelled out. I watched her go through not having any of this stuff taken care of with Grandma and her Alzheimer's disease and I did not want to be doing that myself one day.

Now I just need to do all the will stuff for DH and myself.

I finally hung curtains and a valance in the kitchen today. It is so nice to be able to walk in there in my nightgown and not worry about the neighbors. They are very pretty, white with cherries embroidered on them in blue and a little eyelet lace.

My kitchen looks so nice now, between the pretty pine table and chairs, the new curtains and the matching dishes. Never thought I'd get to this point. Next project in there is to change the surface of the counters and backsplash. We will be using linoleum tiles to cover the surface in a pretty blue print that just happens to match the color of the cherries on the curtains.

So what does my kitchen have to do with saving money? Well, the nicer it looks the more time I want to spend in it cooking and if I am cooking we are not eating out, hence we are saving money. Always a good thing.

Money from ReadRevenue showed up at paypal today so I transferred that to my CU, should show up by Friday.

That about sums it up. Did bits around the yard today. Wiped down the inside of the pool and then the outside of the pool and folded it up and put it away for the summer. This is the first time we've managed to do that before the end of October so I'm proud of us.

We laid out tarps over the old greenhouse foundation so that by next spring all the weeds and stuff will be dead without us using poison to do it. It's also cheaper than buying poison to do it.

Stacked wood and covered it with tarps, though I still need to do some more rearranging and bring wood up onto the porch. So far we haven't had a fire at night yet but the days are getting cooler and I don't imagine it will be too much longer.

The dryer is completely dead now, not just halfway dead. I think it is repairable but I'm not sure I'll bother. It still heats up but the drum doesn't turn. I had used it a bit too much this month because of the rain combined with the laziness and the kidney infection. We had a nice couple of days so I've had stuff out on the line as well as some stuff in the house on the drying racks.

I just need to get caught up during the warm spell so that when it gets rainy again it won't be hard to dry everything in the house. I may buy another drying rack or two to increase my capacity. Of course, once we start using the wood stove stuff will dry within a few hours since the racks are in the same room. So maybe I should try to hold off on that purchase.

Rose stayed home sick from school today. She caught a cold from her best friend who was out Friday (and today). She was in total whine mode. I know she is sick and miserable but she is also ten and can be sick and miserable without being a whiny PITB. Of course, I have not got a great amount of tolerance because she has oh so kindly shared her cold with me and I'm already on antibiotics for the kidney infection, so didn't really need another thing on top of that.

Tobias seems like he is getting stuffy and he felt warm tonight so it is just possible that he will be down by Wednesday if I am any judge. Well, I'll save on gas this week by not having to go to soccer practice with sick kids and I don't have to go to the open house at the school tomorrow which is worse every year with the boring. I think they devise ways to make it more tedious each year.

I was supposed to schedule an oil change for the car this week but that may get pushed to next week. I'm not driving that car until I can take it in. Fortunately, I don't need to.

I drove DH to the airport tonight and he is safely off to work. Filled up with gas at Costco for $2.57 a gallon. Oh, I bought a coat from Land's End online tonight and ordered a new knob for my dishwasher ($28 for a one ounce piece of plastic?). I had to use the credit card but will make an online payment to the card tomorrow in the amount of the two purchases. I really wish these online companies would allow you to make check payments online. So few do.

I really had a hard time buying that coat. I haven't got one anymore, the one I've used for the past ten years just fell to pieces the last time I washed it and I've been using DH's extra coat (work gives him a coat every year) when I've needed one but it is really too large to be comfortable. It is hard for me to find warm enough coats (we live in the mountains) that don't contain down or wool. I am allergic to both, so when I finally found one after searching about 18 different sites, I was thrilled. Wasn't happy about the price of $89.90, but since everything comparable I looked at was $149 or upwards, I guess it it okay. Shipping was $8.95, and there was a bit of tax, came to total of $106 something. I really like the colors, too, imperial blue and deep navy (is there a non-deep navy?). And since I will probably have it for another ten years, that works out to just over $10 a year, so that isn't too bad.

I wasn't too thrilled on the $28 for the dishwasher knob, either. I've been using pliers to turn it on. That's easy as it starts when you get it to the right place. Problem is, I don't know when the knob gets to the dry cycle so I can turn the machine off. And I'm not sure where off is. So it has to run all the way. Now we don't do heat cycle at all, but still, it runs for about fifteen minutes after the wash/rinse is complete and that wastes electricity, so we bought the knob.

I'm tired so I'll end my whine now. Kudos to those of you who waded all the way through it.

I cashed out a $3 PTR at ReadRevenue yesterday. I qualified for a $15 market research study, where the product should be arriving this week for me to test. This is the first one that has no strings attatched. They send me the product, I test it, take a survey, I ship it back in the postage paid packaging and take another survey a week later. I'm excited.

I also filled out a qualification survey for another market research company with the same survey company that I'm doing the other one for so I am hopeful this may become a thing. I've been filling out surveys with this company for several months now before I got to this level. They do have paid surveys about every six weeks or so where I'll get a $4 or $5 check, so I know they pay out. Like that in a company.

I received a $25 Shell gas card in the mail today from MyPoints, so I am going to take $25 out of my gas fund and put it in savings this week. I'll make that $1000 one way or another.

Yesterday was soccer and the kids played pretty well. Tobias has the four mini-games and they tied two and lost one 2 to 1 and one 2 to 0. Rose's team lost 5 to 6, it would have been 7 to 6 but two goals were disqualified for offsides. Yet, the other team was frequently offsides and the ref never seemed to see that. Or the pushing. Although he did call the kicking and deliberate tripping. But I digress.

It was a good game and the other team only got their last two goals in the last 8 minutes of the game, usually they were trailing. It was exciting and fun to watch and our girls felt really good about it, considering they all thought if the ref had been calling the plays right on both sides, they would have won. Problem with a twelve year old ref, I suppose, but the soccer club takes what it can get.

We ended up spending $31.89 for dinner out at Round Table Pizza for the four of us. We go there even though it is a little pricier because they don't use MSG in making their pizzas, which Rose is very allergic to and I don't react well to, either. We have got our eating out down to 1 time a week and I am hoping to get it down to twice a week, which is hard during soccer season, with the ultimate goal being one time out a month.

I am doing more cooking ahead and that helps, but when you have to spend all day at the soccer park and keep a cooler in a boiling hot vehicle, I still worry about food safety. Food poisoning is never fun and I've had it often enough in my life that I just prefer to avoid the whole issue. And I don't want to be dragging a cooler around the fields, either. I already have enough to carry.

Still, there has to be some compromise that won't be so pricey each week. I suppose the dollar menu at McD's maybe, but that's less healthy than pizza (at least the way we order pizza). Maybe the grocery store deli might be an option. Well, cheaper but not necessarily healthy either. I'll have to think on it some more.

Finished reading "Smart Couples Finish Rich," by David Bach yesterday. Very good information and I highly reccommend it for both members of a married couple or for anyone living as a married couple with combined finances. I didn't agree with everything he said, but I'd say about 90 percent of it can be applied to my life. DH is going to read it next.

I have learned a lot about how to invest with retirement money and how to invest beyond retirement money. I'm surprised at how clueless I really was before reading this book. Now I think I have a good foundation on which to build.

I started reading "Smart Women Finish Rich," same author, just to see where the books vary and if there might not be something even more specific to me as a woman than me as part of a couple.

Can't remember if I mentioned that we paid out $32 this week for school pictures and sports pictures, for 2 kids, each package being the cheapest at $8 a piece.

I also have to write a check to fund Tobias's lunch account tomorrow, so that will be another $30. It just makes me life easier when he has hot lunch. I know it is an expense I should cut out, but right now, I'm not quite willing.

Not too much excitement today. The autotdeposit was today so savings is $10 richer, putting me at $947.

We loaded $100 onto our Costco cash card and then used it to put $30.19 worth of gas into the car 2 today @ $2.58 a gallon, 4 cents less than a few days ago. It is weird seeing the gas tank on F, or even on the right side of the halfway point, really.

I had a doctor's appointment this morning, so $15 co-pay and $10 perscription. My kidney infection came back or else its a new one, so I'll be on antibiotics 3X a day for the next 14 days. Oh, joy. Big old capsules, too. Bought organic milk at the store my pharmacy is in so $5.29 for that.

I pulled all the meat off the rest of the turkey bones and seperated it into packages and froze it. I then threw all the bones and skin into the crockpot with 6 quarts of water, a head of crushed garlic, a chopped onion and salt and pepper and am making broth. I will have it going all night and it should be good and rich in the morning when I'll pour it through a seive and then I will make turkey noodle soup to have with supper tomorrow.

I am really into having soup right now. It is very comforting The weather turned on us this last week or so, went from mid to high 70's to wet, rainy, mid 50's to low 60's, and one night got down to 33! Yikes. It hasn't been that cold again, but we really have to drain the pool tomorrow before it happens again.

As for the soup, twice this week we've had homemade chicken noodle at dinner and tonight we had golden potato (DH's great grandmother's recipe), very rich and good, very satisfying and I notice it cuts my appetite for the heavier protein that follows. I still eat the same large amount of veggies as usual, though. But they are cheaper than protein, usually.

I may make a nice onion soup, possibly French onion, but I really don't know if I have the patience to be finicky. I like the ease of crockpot soup. It allows for a large degree of laziness. Which the lousy weather is encouraging. Just want to curl up with a good book under the covers. The current good book I am reading is "Smart Couples Finish Rich," by David Bach. It is very good and I am learning a lot. I had no idea the limits on spousal IRA's for a non-working spouse (when the working spouse has a 401K) had risen so much. Last time I checked, it was a lot lower. This book was written in 2001 and it was $2000 then, so it might be more now, even.

I will have to look into that. I'm not sure when I might be able to fund one, but I want something in my name for my own personal security. My DH is a solid man who I don't think would ever leave me for any reason and seems to think the sun rises and sets on me for some reason and I see no reason I would ever leave him, he is kind, good and a wonderful spouse and father and I kind of think the sun rises and sets on him also. But I still want something in my name. Security is my biggest issue. I want it no matter what else happens. The idea feels right.

Not much else today. Oh, DH took Tobias to soccer and they are having team pictures so that was $8. School photos were yesterday and today so that was $16 for both kids. We only get the 8X10 and scan it to make copies on the school ones, and the 5X7 team photo with the individual shot in the same photo for sports photos. Rose will have her team photo tomorrow, another $8. I wish these weren't all in the same week, but I guess this is a good week for it if it has to be all at once.

Okay, I think that's it then for today. Got in a very talky mood, I guess.

I added $14 to savings today bringing my total to $937. Just $63 to go to reach my $1000 goal. I'm going to have $20 more in autodeposits before the end of the month, which means if I can figure out a way to come up with $43 then I might hit $1000 by the end of the month.

I know I will have at least $8 from clickthrus, which will leave just $35 to scrounge up. I might even get $11 from click-thrus, hard to say. I don't know. I'd have to push hard to find the extra money, though I think I still have at least $5 in my old freezer account, which would mean scraping up $30. My change jar currently has $9.48 in it, so that is really just $20.52 to come up with, less if that extra $3 click-thru comes through.

You know what? I can do this. I really can. I'm going to make my new goal be to reach that $1000 total by the end of September. This is a real possibility. This is more than that actually, this is a real probability. I will have $1000 in my savings account by the end of this month. And it won't even hurt.

Well, the $3 ReadRevenue payment from PayPal came through to my checking account today so I transferred that to savings, bringing the total to $923. Just $77 more to go to hit my goal of $1000. Just a few more weeks and I will. This is so exciting for me. I never thought I'd get here and now its imminent. Wow.

Today has been a very long day. We started out by going to the first service ever of a brand new church being held in our division's clubhouse. I haven't been to a church service in 11 years, so that was weird. Not sure its going to take yet.

Received payment at paypal for the PTR I cashed out a few days ago, so I transferred that to my CU.

Spent the day organizing the kitchen. We found the table, so no more eating in the living room off TV trays or the coffee table. I managed to get my stockpile off the table and into the cupboards. I still need to make an inventory of what is in the cupboards.

I am currently roasting 12 turkey legs, some for dinner tonight and another night and some for lunch meat for the kids this week. They were $0.69 a pound at Fred Meyer in the value packs.

We are going to try rearranging our eating schedule this week. With soccer at 5:30 four weekday nights a week it makes it really late to be eating, so we have decided to have dinner right after the kids get home from school at 4:00. They are always really hungry then anyway. Usually I eat my largest meal at lunch but I'm going to switch it to dinner and see how things go. I don't like to eat heavily late at night, but 4:00 may be early enough to not get that heavy feeling at bedtime.

It may make getting the kids to bed easier, also. My schedule is flexible as a SAHM and DH's is when he is home as he only works when he's up in Alaska, so he doesn't mind changing things around either. It would be nice to just come home from soccer, have the kids take their baths, have them do their homework or reading and then go to bed right away. I hope it works as well as I think it will.

Not much money related today, was there? Oh, well. The money thing seems to be going okay at the moment. Just feel a bit boring today.

The auto deposit was today so savings is up by $10 more, bringing it to a total of $917. I have already hit my goal of $100 saved this month and gone over by $7. Woohoo! I'll have two more of those deposits this month and $3 from the PTR I cashed out. Hmm...if I can squeeze out $20 more somewhere I'll hit $150 this month. Well, we'll see. And my goal of $1000 total is getting so close I can taste it.

I received my first check from Your2Cents survey company for $11 today. I cashed out back in the first week of August so it took six weeks to get here. ACOP is a lot faster.

So with that $11 and the coin I rolled today of $10.50, plus 2 quarters to even things up, I will deposit $22 to savings bringing the total in there to $907. I will make that deposit tomorrow when I go pick DH up from the airport.

I should be able to cash out a $3 PTR tomorrow night.

Also received the refund from DH's work to pay us back for the safety glasses he bought. I've already paid $100 out of our own money, so with the check I will have $100 left after paying the rest of it off. For now I will put that money in a savings account at a different CU from my main savings until I decide where it will go.

Much, much cheaper than anything in the stores right now. Going to the source when you live near it anyway really helps cut down on the grocery expenses.

I am going to go down to one of the farms this week and get corn to freeze. There is this one farm that sells ears of corn 10 for $1.00, so I usually get 100 ears for $10 and do them up for the freezer. DH is allergic to corn so it is only for the 3 of us and it lasts a long time.

It looks like our 401K is starting to slowly recover from the plummet. Well, the balance is going up. The change since the end of July is a difference of $872.26. The total balance is at $37,250 now. Some of that is contributions but some of it is also dividends (not as much). It is good to see the number increase, the way it should be. I hope this trend continues. Faster would be good, too. LOL

Today I deposited the former amount of our cable bill, $65, into savings, bringing the total in that account to $885. I need to deposit just $25 more to hit my monthly goal of $100 saved, and just $115 to hit my next goal of $1000 saved. I am so psyched to see those numbers keep on going up.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of my first blog entry here. I've been blogging 5 months. Wow. I sure have come a long way from only having about $150 in savings (only cause I hadn't spent it yet!) and being sure it was impossible to save anything with all of our debt, to managing to save at least $100 a month and still put a little extra towards paying off debt. It amazes me to think what just a few months of hanging around the people on this forum has done to me. It has totally altered my thinking.

DH called today and the man who injured his knee up at work may not be back in time to cover one week of his shift, so if that is the case, DH will go back up a week early next time he's home and do that job for a week. It will get him a bit of experience in a field engineer's job and he will be able to see whether he likes the work in that position or not. But if the guy's knee is okay, then it won't happen. So no counting chickens yet.

The extra week would be $1900 that could go straight onto one of the credit cards. I would really like that. Unless they paid him at the field engineer's rate (which I doubt since its temp) then it would be closer to $2400, which would go even further. But again, no chicken counting. I refuse to do that until I hear them clucking. LOL

DH said that the new guy is needing a lot of hand holding and it is irritating his bosses, so maybe if knee guy stays healthy, new guy will tank. Oh, isn't that awful of me? I shouldn't even be halfway wishing that, its so mean. But I am.

Today was the day of the auto transfer of $10 to savings, bringing the total in that account to $820.

On Tuesday I wrote a check for $20 to fund Tobias's hot lunch account at school. Turns out he had $10 left over from last year, so he should be good for awhile. I didn' need to fund Rose's account yet, she had quite a bit left over from last year.

Yesterday I paid $50 at the physical therapist. Part of that will be reimbursed by insurance, but if I pay up front it is only $50, and if I let it go through insurance first than it costs $70.

I also spent $3.25 for a double cheese burger, small fry and small Coke at McDonalds for lunch. I always eat like a crazy person after seeing the physical therapist, so I thought I did a good job restraining myself. And everything was off the dollar menu. If I had waited and drove the 45 minutes home and then made lunch, I'm sure I would have eaten more than $3.25 worth of food. I don't know what it is about it that makes me so hungry, the muscles demanding a protein infusion, maybe? I don' know. All in all, it was successful, I think.

Tomorrow is payday and I am going to put an extra $200 on the Bank of America card. Usually I pay $800 for it but with holiday pay from Monday being on the next payday's check, I can take the extra $200 out of this one to add there. I also have to pay the house mortgage (its been sitting in my purse for 2 weeks and is due on the 11th, should have done it sooner but keep forgetting).

DH and I are looking at cars. Well, looking on the internet right now, but at the local dealerships. I'm not sure we can swing the Prius at this point but I think we can handle a Hyundai Elantra or Sonata. They get 32 MPG/26MPG and 30 MPG/24 MPG respectively for automatic transmission and they are much lower priced and highly rated than comporable cars in their class. Since we do most of our driving on the highway the mileage would be towards the higher number. But even getting 24 in city traffic sounds mighty good compared to what the other cars do now.

FIL has an Elantra and he and MIL love it. I've ridden in it and it rides well. When DH comes home we are going to borrow it and take it for a good long drive to see how it feels on the highway. The dealership probably wouldn't let us take it long enough to get a feel for a 25 mile commute, so we can circumvent that this way.

We are looking at either a 2004 or 2005 Elantra or a 2005 Sonata (first year issued). The purchase is still slated for next April. The 2007's are coming out so we figure next spring some good vehicles will be coming up, either off lease or as trade-ins that are 2 years old. We have the patience to wait. I also need to find out if they 5 year roadside assistance that comes with the purchase of a new Hyundai is transferable to a new owner. I sure hope so. It would be nice to have.

I am so irritated with myself. I managed to spill an entire glass of water on my alarm clock. Of course, I killed it. Tomorrow is the first day of school for the kids so now I have to drive all the way to town and back ($9 of gas or so), buy a new clock ($10 to $20). Now most of the time I use cups with lids because I am a big klutz, but they were all in the wash and I figured I could be careful. Nope. Can't. Sigh.

There are other alarm clocks in the house but none of them function except as clocks anymore. I called my mother to see if she has an extra one, nope. Neither does MIL. Or SIL. My sister is down in Mt. Lake Terrace now or I'd ask her. So not much choice in the matter. Darn it and double darn it. Sigh.

Could I not have waited one more day to spill on my alarm clock? I have to go to town for a follow-up doctor's appointment on my kidney infection tomorrow so I could have combined trips. Sigh.

Okay, okay, no point crying over spilt water. What is done is done and now I must go make a purchase. Grumble, grumble, grumble. It wouldn't do to sleep through the first few hours of school, now would it? LOL

My loot from the last couple of days has been high. I received 6 free tea lights from Lilly's Country Cottage and they smell wonderful without being overpowering. Not quite pretty to look at but that may have to do with being in the mailbox for several hours yesterday in 90 degree heat. I also got samples from Clean Home Journal (SC Johnson). I got a Off! Deep Woods Towlette (R) with a $1 coupon off any of their insect repellants, a Windex Dry Microfiber Cloth (R) with a $1 coupon off same, and a Ziploc Double Zipper (R) quart size storage bag with $0.75 coupon off any Ziploc brand bags.

Pretty nice haul for 2 days.

I have already been using the double zip freezer bags as Costco switched over a bit ago and I love them. It does make a difference, even though they were good bags before. And it is easier for my kids to get them really closed. It put a stop to the dried out hotdogs because the little one couldn't always get the bag shut all the way. Now he can.

Today saw the $25 Shell gas card from MyPoints arrive in my mailbox. The $3 ReadRevenue transfer from payapl to my CU showed up today so I moved that to savings, bringing the total in there to $813.

I did not get over to the other CU to open the CD, probably won't until Wednesday. I had to go finish getting school supplies, and stuff for school lunches, and then I had to get the kids new soccer gear, Rose needed socks and shin guards and Tobias needed bigger cleats. They both had their first practices today. Unfortunately, after next Tuesday their schedules will divirge, which means we will be at the practice fields four days a week and the game field once a week. Yuck, ugh, and blech. Their first game isn't until the 9th.

I stopped by the school and got their class lists. Tobias is happy because his best little girl friend is in his class and so is the female half of the new set of twins who moved in down the block. And two boys and two other girls from his kindergarten class are in his first grade class also.

Rose is really thrilled because two of the girls she really likes and has been friends with since kindergarten are in her new class. I'm thrilled, too. These girls come from good families with similar values, don't swear or smoke (the parents), and have the same sort of background as we do. I much prefer her being with these girls than one of the others who wasn't the best influence and had a totally disagreeable personality, at least around me. She's not in the class.

It's an advanced class of grade 5, they will be mixed in with some kids from grade 6 for reading, writing, science, computers and math, but have music, art, p.e., and history at grade level. This could be quite a challenge for Rose, because even though she is very smart, she is also lazy about school. I hope it challenges her in a good way. She gets frustrated fast when she doesn't "feel like" learning. But she also got frustrated fast being bored with being ahead of the rest of grade 4 last year and having to wait for the others to catch up.

I am really looking forward to Tuesday. I don't know which of us is the most excited. LOL